


All Dressed Up in Blue

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Karaoke, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 16:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16479161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Rafael Barba is thirty-five, alone at a bar, and wearing one half of a couples Halloween costume.





	All Dressed Up in Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! This silly little ditty was the result of me putting together my Bruce Springsteen costume, and realizing I'd lose a Who Wore it Best? contest to a fictional character.

Friendship is as strange a bit of human functionality as Rafael Barba can name. It’s fluid and bucks the rules of of proximity and closeness that define anything comparable to it: professional relationships, romantic ones. Friendship is more weathered than those, in many cases more profound. He doesn’t think he’s gotten it quite right since childhood, either, when he struck gold twice and never again. 

He might count Rita Calhoun among those ranks, having met her at Harvard, endured her through their respective gigs at large, lucrative firms after graduation, and still contended with her now, on opposite sides of a courtroom. 

_Might._ Because as it happens, she’s left him high and dry for the evening, running roughshod through their plans for a date. If they were a decade younger, this would amount to high crimes. But because by the weekend he feels every bit the thirty-five years he is, Rafael knows he should let it go, cut his losses for the evening and find something or someone to occupy himself with in a city that is never lacking for either.

 _However._ He’s in a costume, which vastly tips the scale in what is permissible. Granted, it’s nothing so outlandish that he can’t pass it off--remove the battered red cap from his back pocket, unroll the short sleeves of his white t-shirt, tame his hair and lose the aviators--but for his friend to have left him high and dry in any such a state calls into question whether she can claim the rarified title at all. 

He’s at the mercy, instead, of a recent invitation he’d dismissed earlier. A few texts puts him back into the graces of another handful of friends, though the term is loosely assembled. They’re his colleagues from the Brooklyn DA’s office, from which he’d recently parted ways to see up a position in Manhattan. Rafael isn’t as close with them as he is with Rita-- _was,_ he reminds himself, as his bare arms catch a bit of a chill--but they’re of a kind. Despite their disperate postings--HR, internal resources, legal--they figured one another for queer, which in such a stringent settling was as good a reason to establish ties as anything. 

Queer and in the workplace. They could have had t-shirts made. 

It’s only a facet of connection, the low glimmer of recognition, as much or as little can be seen in the unknown faces of people in line for coffee or waiting--always waiting--for a delayed subway train. Still, it’s more than most people have, even for working in the same building for years. It’s friendship only inasmuch as it is not total disregard. 

_No,_ Rafael corrects. He appreciates it more than he lets on. They’re good guys. They had plans and graciously made space for a fourth. 

It’s just that, between them, they don’t have a lick of taste.

The charge was led by a fastidious tech analyst, Paul, whose only requirement was that they hit up a place with a hot bartender. He’d gone home with one once and decided it was his defining characteristic. 

They ended up at some mediocre karaoke bar, not quite in the Village, not quite outside of it. Rather than the heart of the neighborhood, they were closer to the esophagus. The clientele was runoff from both places: some have obviously come in from their offices, too chickenshit to be seen someplace closer to home, and laboring under the notion that things were wilder, stranger, more wicked in the Village. The parts of the crowd skewing younger were of the beard-and-slight-gut variety, either feeling excluded from the racier bars or congregating here in self-imposed exile.

Rafael doesn’t dwell on it long--the place has a good enough selection of cocktails, beer, and liquor. Whatever rigid ideas brought people here, they loosened, blurred, and became ill-defined once the tabs opened. 

And the bartender is, as they often tend to be, gorgeous. (“I'm Tony Stark,” he says, explaining his costume of a drawn-on goatee and tank top. There's a touch of mascara, too, for authenticity.) 

They drink and talk until they do more laughing than talking, and more dancing than laughing. Rafael flits around between anyone who catches his interest, or who asks his. Somehow, there’s less shame being grinded on by a man dressed as Rambo than not, and none whatsoever for the Captain Kirk--gold shirt pre-torn--he briefly makes out with.

Between the dancing, there’s still more drinking--enough to consider the karaoke stage. 

Things don’t get so desperate. 

Paul strikes out with the bartender, and ten minutes after that he has sured up a location for some other party, thrown by some other, equally distant friends. He talks it up and makes quick work of convincing the other two to join him at a rooftop party in Brooklyn. 

It sounds exciting and fun, and they’d all be close enough to home to risk making a real night of it--a factor that speaks openly to their age and slightly altered sense of fun. Specifically, that convenience and good planning is part of the fun. 

Only Rafael startles with a laugh. 

“Are you joking? We’re barely pulling this off.” 

It’s a little too much, a little too mean. He knows this, and they know this. Paul responds in kind, teasing, “Maybe you, with your clothes-hamper-curated costume. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sure you had to buy the hat. I’m fuckin’ Dracula.” 

Rafael laughs at that, too, and when he tells them to go, wishes them well, he promises to cover the drinks. And all is forgiven. 

He thanks them, very sincerely, for the night out. 

Then Rafael Barba sits at the bar, eyes the gorgeous bartender, and settles into the last dregs of his scotch. 

It’s not a total waste of an evening, he decides, turning his scotch over the lingering taste of nicotine gum in his mouth. He’s pleased enough with how it got there, and feels good in ways he often doesn’t, anymore--not with the life he has, the career he’s built, the prestige he’s after. This night is drawn in all the wild hues and gritty shades of some other time, some other existence, back when his body took drink and sex and trouble with ease. 

He’s not without it by any stretch--he’d like to find that Captain Kirk again, to be honest--but Rafael knows he’ll feel every bad decision, every drink too many, come morning. He’ll wear it on his breath and in his hair. It’ll cover his skin and feel dirty against his bedsheets, then not afford him any give when he inevitably tries to bury himself under layers and layers, trying to block out all light and conceal all shame. 

He considers his scotch on the bartop. 

He really should--

“Hey, Bruce, you missin’ some of the E Street Band?”

Rafael wouldn’t have turned around, except the line sounds so incredibly absurd, but for all the wrong reasons. The speaker seems entirely uncertain, even for deliberately speaking every syllable. He is nervous, wary, even for having put himself forward. Rafael feels a weight on the back of his barstool that retreats just as quickly as it arrives--a hand, he realizes, a tentative grip--because the speaker means to join him, but won’t test his luck any further past the cheesy introduction. 

“That’s a shitty line,” Rafael says, and sets his sights on an unexpected source. 

He’s surprised to see the speaker is young, handsome despite some unfortunate costume facial hair. A bright smile breaks across his features--another peculiar response. Nevermind Rafael’s curt response; the man seems all the more pleased that he’s being regarded at all. It’s as though, even for reaching out, he wasn’t expecting a response, and is therefore thrilled for the result, however minimal. 

Rafael is made to think of all those wanting minds out in the hills of West Virginia, listening to the universe from their radio telescope. 

The man takes Rafael’s maintained eye contact as an invitation to the seat next to him at the bar. He uses his beer to claim the spot first, then wrangles into the space, himself. 

Rafael doesn’t watch him do this; he turns back around and speaks into the dead air head of himself. His attention, he intends to make clear, isn’t won yet.

“But I have to give you credit: your costume is hilarious.” 

The man, who is still smiling, falters. His eyes bloom wide as the sentiment lands and figures itself out. He looks down at his trim navy uniform, the patch on one sleeve, unit number on the other, the silver badge at his hip. 

“My--? Oh. Uhm. I’m a cop. Actually.” 

“I’m sure.” Rafael smirks, and it’s every shade of lude. There's not a cliche excluded from the young man’s get-up, such to the point that he could walk onto the set of any trashy procedural drama, no questions asked, and at the very least score a background role. _Generic Cop #2._

The man’s knees bump against Rafael’s thigh accidentally--there’s really no space for him at the bar, and his legs are spidered out, one to each side. Rafael quickly appreciates his height and slim build, and realizes he’s been reading this all wrong--or else the man doesn’t know what a figure he cuts.

 _Could cut,_ with a mind for the occasion. 

“Quite the missed opportunity, opting for that mustache but forgoing the hotpants.”

A blush blazes over his cheeks and neck, rendering him impossibly pink. 

“Listen, man, I’m actually a cop. Homicide, with the 110th.”

Rafael rolls his eyes, asks dully, “Are you investigating the death of this party, then?”

He musters up another smile, this one smaller, held a little closer to the chest as he ruminates on the man he’s approached: handsome, sharp, _funny._

“Real cute,” he huffs. 

“As are you,” Rafael says, unencumbered by any notions, now, of how this should go. If he’d been halfway out the door, he might have not responded. But hasn’t left yet, and here’s a cause for staying. 

And, truly--it’s no hard slough on his part. If Rafael looks past the hideous mustache, he can see bright blue eyes, soft pink lips, and the unassuming youth perpetuated by those features. 

The man drains his beer; Rafael seems to have rendered him parched.

He signals the bartender for another then asks, “So are you, uh, performing solo tonight, or--”

“Jesus, stop.” Rafael cuts him off, extends his hand. “Rafael.”

The man scrambles to comply, and his hand is wet from the condensation on his beer. Rafael’s sights are firmly set, now, so he grins and bears it. 

“S--Dominick.”

Rafael cocks his head, draws back his hand. 

“Did you just give me a fake name?”

The man bites into his cheek, caught. “No,” he insists, and the hand that had gripped Rafael’s--over-warm and embarrassingly wet--now raked through his hair. “I stopped myself from givin’ my nickname.”

The hand travels to the back of his neck, then swoops down into his shirt, and forward to reach his collarbone, where he’s found a nervous itch to take care of. 

“Because you’ll sit here and poorly flirt with me, but a preferred name is a bridge too far?”

“Because some guys get weird when I introduce myself as Sonny,” he says, shrugging helplessly. 

Intrigued, Rafael rests his chin on his fist, and studies the man without interruption. His gaze is more focused than his tally of drinks might suggest, but Rafael is trained for this: he can figure a person for honest or not, fast as a glance. His numbers are lagging here, and still he’s not sure about this one--he might very well be taken with that unforgivable shade of pink--but he’s curious, all the same. 

“You just haven’t got a chance out there, have you?” Rafael says, a promise. “Which do you actually go by?”

“Sonny,” Sonny answers, shyly now, as if he’s heard Rafael’s every intention. 

“I’m going to call you Dominick.”

“S’nice to meet you, too, Rafael,” Sonny says, and then holds a hand to his heart as if mortally wounded. “What’s wrong with my flirtin’?”

Rafael doesn’t miss a beat. “Where to begin. I twice complimented your costume--”

“I mean, you’ve insulted me three times now, because it’s not--”

“--and aside from your pick-up line, you’d think I wasn’t really making an effort, here.” Rafael gestures down his own form, indicating his t-shirt and jeans. 

Sonny has his wits about his enough to lean back, to really take in the ensemble. He steeples his index fingers over his lips and the tip of his nose, considering. 

“It’s an incredible display of craftsmanship,” is Sonny’s final determination, and he is downright giddy when Rafael snorts in amusement. “You always go this all-out for Halloween?”

“In my defense--” Rafael almost slips in the fact that he’s a prosecutor, here. It’s a fine little introduction he doesn’t think he needs: Sonny seems enthralled by him, plenty. “In my defense, a friend and I had plans to attend a… sort of a couples-themed party. We were going as _Because the Night._ She was Patti Smith.”

“Oh.”

Rafael smiles for the care Sonny takes not to look _too_ crestfallen.

“We’re not,” he says, “A couple.” 

“Oh,” Sonny repeats, perking back up. “You do look great, by the way. I just thought it kind of went without sayin’.” 

Rafael purses his lips before returning to that favorite well of scotch and sarcasm. He sips, then observes, “I could stand to hear it.”

Hearing himself trip from smarmy to wanting, that's when Rafael knows: he's had a little too much to drink. The only solution at this point is to drink more, and teeter off that narrow cliff for the soft embrace of a valley. 

He glides his knee to rest between Sonny’s legs as he swings like a planet in orbit, coming that much closer. 

“Well, I’ll say it next time,” Sonny promises.

Rafael flirts shamelessly for the next ten minutes. Sonny makes it easy, smiling and laughing and responding in kind. Rafael finds his expectations catch up with him, and sometimes he pauses the conversation, as if to allow for the inevitable to slide through: a request, or merely the suggestion, of knowing one another intensely, if altogether briefly. 

Being approached at a bar like this, _like this,_ has its own internal propulsion. The drumming starts at the back of one’s throat, then feeds throughout the limbs, concentrating in the hands as they reach out for a partner on the dance floor, for a moment, for a night. 

Rafael keeps his hands to himself, a conscious choice as he realizes Sonny is doing much the same. Of all the things he wants in life, Rafael knows how to work long and hard for them, and when necessary--he knows how to wait. 

What throws him is why Sonny is waiting at all. Rafael has given him a seat at the bar, his best smiles, _his attention._ All signs point to yes. 

A group gets up to karaoke, all of them dressed as classic movie monsters in shades of black and white. The styling is especially eerie; Rafael cannot conceive of a vision of a place like _this_ as the setting for an old movie, much less people like _them,_ filling it with life.

Heading the procession is a man in a dower suit and tie, and for his severity Rafael might have expected to spot a priest’s collar to finish the look, but none is apparent. The crowd groans and cheers as the opening chords of _The Monster Mash_ pebble out. 

Sonny tells Rafael--very genuinely, bordering on adamant-- _“I love this song.”_ Then he cranes his neck to watch the obviously coordinated--if slightly inebriated--performance. Rafael gets the impression these guys have gone from karaoke bar to karaoke bar all night with their one-hit-wonder, garnering free drinks and cheap applause. He doesn’t say as much to Sonny, who is shouting along at the chorus, and clapping the loudest for the group as their song ends. Rafael finds he likes this: none of the sneering disdain he might be accused of from time to time--indeed, even prone to--but sheer delight, only, and active efforts to encourage everyone else’s good time.

It fits the tenor of the night, and against his best judgment, Rafael feels like he's struck gold here. He can imagine himself smiling and laughing for days after the fact at the memory--still only prospective at this point--of the sweet fling he scored on Halloween. 

It's worse than a fantasy. Rafael knows he is ultimately after something good enough to stand up against other good things--actual relationships, even. That this is nothing beyond harmless flirting shows how deep he feels those recesses are, how far he's dug in, how close he is to rock bottom. With respect to good times, there is a lot of room to fill. Rafael stands in his own grave, and knows what will put him there faster than the heart disease that runs in his family. 

Sonny turns to him, folds his arms on the bar top. He’s settling in. 

Rafael mimics him, knowing he’s that much closer to getting what he wants. 

“What do you do?”

Rafael drags his gaze over Sonny's outfit again, then, as if to say, _Well if **you’re** a cop, then…_

He monotones, “I sell out stadiums singing to the working class spirit and American psychological and socio-economic disillusionment.”

“Very funny,” Sonny says, and leans in close. “You know, I can _prove_ that I’m a cop.”

There’s bite in Sonny’s words, and no scarcity of challenge. It’s entirely unexpected, given where the night had been: near rand growing nearer, sweet and silly, _easy._ Until now, Rafael was under the distinct impression Sonny had been thoroughly won, that strategy was unnecessary now, its attempt perverse. 

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a stage,” Sonny nods over Rafael’s shoulder. “Or are you all talk, no action?” 

Rafael, who has drink enough in him, and annoyance at being abandoned not once but _twice_ in one night, and intrigue in this potential conquest showing a little push-back, decides there’s no verbal bridge to cross this divide. He must either accept he possesses an ounce of humility and see where that gets him, or he refuses, and goes relentlessly where he pleases. 

He turns clear away from Sonny, giving him shoulder and back and nothing else. In one gulp he polishes off his drink, then flags down the bartender.

_“Shit.”_

He hears Sonny swear under his breath, and the scene is altogether so clear, Rafael can see it even for not: Sonny ducks his head a little, preoccupies himself with his drink. He knows he’s blown it, thinks he’s pushed the cop joke past its punchline, and what he’d meant for a joke came across as pushy and annoying. He knows this, he _does this,_ always, letting his excitement carrying him well over markers of decorum. Other people see them, and Sonny just blazes on by. He knows he’s seen for careless and totally lacking in self-awareness. 

He wants to tell Rafael that he’s absolutely a try-hard and a people-pleaser, that self-preservation has always been his fiercest enemy. He’s not good at this, never has been. What he’s good at is pretending. 

But somehow that’s even worse, the explanation that _honesty_ is his problem, but not in the way Rafael might think. 

Sonny watches him disappear from his bar stool and move with such purpose through the crowd, it’s dizzying. The shame he feels in having driven someone so resolutely _away_ causes his face to blossom red. Sonny wants to make the same effort in the opposite direction, but his stomach feels like it’s risen to his chest, and he thinks if he so much as catches someone’s elbow during an escape, he’ll lose more than his dignity.

He tucks in to his place at the bar. It’s his burial grounds, now, private even for the crowds. 

To compliment his descent, the throbbing music softens, then stops. He imagines himself falling far away from it, which is entirely too morbid, except he’s drunk enough for precisely that. 

He hears a warm voice bear down over his head, penetrate his senses. 

_“This is for Dominick, who’s been flirting with me.”_

Sonny doesn’t understand what he’s hearing, even as the music drops into place and Rafael’s voice answers it: unspoiled, powerful, unwavering. 

Both the music soundtrack and the crowd dulls in comparison to his singing, which digs deep and soars high, a paradox, but also an answer. Why was that smart mouth so twisting with its smiles? Because the man behind it has every word in the dictionary, and a voice with which to make them into music. 

It’s _Born to Run_ that he’s singing, a tune for speeding empty stretches of highway or staying sat in one’s vehicle in a parking lot, unwilling and unable to leave the song unheard. And though he imbues it with wild, radiant energy, Rafael is no mimic. There’s a ballad amidst the pronunciations, a voice that bathes in depths and does not find itself reaching anywhere it cannot.

It’s his body, then, that renders this performance an _event._ Sonny doesn’t know how to take it, how to weigh it against the singing, how to hold both in his head at once. He knows he likes it, that his face hurts from grinning, that he’s not alone. The whole bar is transfixed, because they too can see it: the incongruity of a man who, despite his jeans and t-shirts, his strong arms and softening middle, has an air of achievement about him. It’s born of the same confidence that put him on stage, and surely backed by something as real as his voice. 

Nothing here is by accident. 

Sonny is lifted that much higher by the conclusion: it is set, decided, fated that he should come away from this meeting changed, that the chance he’s been afforded answers for itself. 

It’s this kind of thinking that takes Sonny out of the scene for a moment, and instead of listening or watching Rafael, he well and truly _sees_ him: his smile, shy now, and his gaze, searching as the song ends and he backs away from the DJ clapping him on the back. Sonny catches his eye and even from the stage, Rafael realizes what he’s done. 

This poor, poor man will live the rest of his life having been serenaded. 

Rafale makes his way to Sonny, but they don’t return to their seats at the bar. They are well and truly past that. 

Sonny doesn’t know what to say except, “Great costume.”

Rafael laughs, but before he can respond, Sonny lowers his head, looking like he might recite a prayer or accent his hands and body with some other devotional deed.

“Come back to my place. Please. I’ll find some hotpants on the way.” Sonny keeps talking; he’s certain Rafael has said all that he needs, but there’s more yet Sonny feels due to deliver. “At least--come outside a minute? You got one hell of a voice. I want to hear it better.”

It's a line Rafael can get behind. That, and the fact that Sonny has taken his hand in a sure grip has him riding a wave of applause out the door. 

The night is cool, but Rafael’s skin is still burning hot, and his hands make no effort to leap to his bare arms, to cover anything he hasn’t already given to a bar full of patrons. He looks to Sonny, expecting something--what?--and in the grip of shared uncertainty, the moment breaks, hangs. In one second Sonny wonders if leaving the bar was a rookie mistake, but in the next Rafael is walking straight-backed and grinning wolfishly beside him, like he's come away with a big kill. Sonny picks up the second after that, glomming on gladly to what he can feel is already happening. 

“After that,” he says, cool and confident, “Do you want to fuck me?”

“After seeing you,” Sonny corrects at once. _Let the records show…_ “After that?”

He doesn’t know there’s much he doesn’t want, or wouldn’t freely give. He flings his free arm wide, answering: _Anything._

Rafael is satisfied, thrilled, just a little uneasy. Feeling like he could be swept off his feet just as well as plummet hard against the ground is how he likes it. 

“I’m uptown. Where are you?”

“Queens.”

“So you weren’t lying about that.”

Sonny beams his absurd smile up at the sky, lost and chewed into as it is among overhanging air conditioning units and beyond them, skyscrapers. 

“I wasn’t lying about anything.” 

Back down on earth, Rafael is regarding him warily. He takes an extra two steps and moves ahead of Sonny, hand loosening itself from his grip. Sonny doesn’t have time to concern himself with this change of pace, because soon both of Rafael’s hands are bracing him, fingertips disappearing into his hair, warm palms against the hollows of his cheeks, thumbs at the corners of his mouth. He raises himself up as Sonny dips, and they meet, really, for the first time. 

It’s an encore to what he did back in the bar--the singing, certainly, but just as well the smirking, the laughing, the scowling. There isn’t a shape he doesn’t know, or can’t accommodate. Here--between lips and teeth and tongue and cheek--are still more facades he dress up and show off in.

Rafael is the first to pull back, but he doesn’t go far. He sinks his head against Sonny’s chest and groans in dismay.

“It’s actually real.” 

Sonny’s laugh is breathless. He doesn’t feel anything but the ghostly warmth and wetness on his mouth, and most notably--its absence. Embarrassment that his mustache may be such an insurmountable turn-off doesn’t even register.

“About as real as the uniform, yeah.” 

Rafael extricates himself from Sonny, then puts a few harried steps between them. He stands against a red brick building that seems to back itself away from the sidewalk. Rafael feels hidden there, even through there’s nothing so much as a telephone pole or streetlight to obstruct Sonny’s view of him.

And what Sonny sees doesn’t bode well. Suddenly the cold has set in, and Rafael is holding his arms across his chest, and frowning. He looks so far removed from the man who could tease and entice in a single breath, who confidently graced the stage with a deep reservoir of talent that Sonny thinks to look for _that guy_ behind them. 

“I can’t fuck a cop,” he says, practically whining. By that measure, Sonny grasps that it’s likely not a matter of principle.

“If there’s a warrant out for your arrest, tell me about it in the morning.”

“I’m an ADA,” Rafael says, and the jokes end there.

Sonny balks; he has a million questions, but only one pushes past the others to surface. 

“What burrough?”

“Manhattan.”

“Might as well be a different planet,” Sonny insists, then flattens his hand to his chest, reiterating, _“Queens.”_

It is a hill he feels he might very well die on. 

Because while Rafael remains unconvinced, he doesn’t shift or block Sonny’s path as the younger man approaches, lording his lanky, uniformed frame over this strange man he’s just met. Instead Rafael looks up into the man’s face, recounts for himself how enamoured he was with the pink lips and blue eyes, the ready bouts of laughter, and how all of that still stands.

This still has all the potential for a good memory, so long as he omits some details from its private telling. 

It's hard to get around the fact that he’s mistaken Sonny for anything than what he purports to be. Except--and Rafael is not above stooping to crawl through loopholes--he considers, too, the fact that his cop is so far from home, and uses that for a crutch. Rafael wonders if he doesn’t have a whole host of reasons for well and truly believing Manhattan is worlds away.

Maybe, despite his pronounced efforts, he's deeply closeted. Maybe there's nothing to fear--even if circumstance hurls itself at them, Sonny will never give himself up to that particular truth. Maybe he does this once in a while, because he cannot fathom another way. Maybe they will never cross paths again.

The reassurance stings and fortifies itself, the very act of brazing skin and leaving a scar.

As Rafael fears he’s surrendering, Sonny gives his last, best argument: “Take me now, baby, here as I am.”

Rafael chokes. 

_“What?”_

And there’s that _pink_ again, in full bloom. Spring has arrived at the very cust of autumn.

“That song. For your costume. It’s that, right?” He wets his lips. “Pull me close, try and understand.”

“You…” Rafael shakes his head. This is damn-near incomprehensible. “It’s a song. Not a lunch order you’re reading back for accuracy.”

Sonny shrugs, grins. If only he’d known more, Rafael wouldn’t have heard the end of it.

“I can’t sing like you can, but I got some noises.” 

Rafael snorts in derision. “Bird calls? Whale sounds? ‘The pig says oink?’”

“If that’s what you’re into,” Sonny says, and dares to reprise Rafael’s move with his leg, parting his own and fitting himself against Rafael, as Rafael had liked it. He chances a move of his own, raising his hands to lightly brace Rafael by the arms. He doesn’t afford him any warmth or security--there’s only the barest of touches from his fingertips, none of them certain, all of them idling. 

(He doesn’t know how or why an ADA has arms like these, but it’ll be something he asks if he’s tangled up in them, later.)

Given their proximity and the relative quiet of the sidewalk, Rafael can hear Sonny’s heart thrumming in his chest. He’s terrified of something, Rafael thinks, though it’s nothing like what he suspects. 

Sonny sees denial on the horizon, suspects the odds are against him. He’s been teased with out-and-out refusal once before, and wielding survival’s trophy one moment is hardly impressive if he’s stripped of it in the next. 

“Give it the car ride,” Sonny murmurs. He’s surprised it doesn’t sound like he’s begging, a miracle by which Rafael’s stern look confirms. He won’t be played, and Sonny implores to him-- _I am no player._ “I mean it. We get to your place, you let me know if I’m comin’ up or not. Your call.” 

It is. And Rafael’s had it called since Sonny ran his stupid pick-up line roughshod over his nerves, just to get it out.

Enough of the barely-there touches up and down his arms; Rafael feels like he’s being courted by chantilly lace. He twists out and side steps Sonny, grabbing the man by the wrist as he does, pulling him close. 

There’s another kiss, but Rafael isn’t searching for anything new. 

“I’m never going to see your face again, do you understand?” he says, watching Sonny’s expression open and close, tempering what he wants by what he’s given. 

There’s a taxi up the street, and the doors open to allow a werewolf and a cowboy to exit. 

Bruce Springsteen and his police escort flag it down.


End file.
